He was coding at 12 and became one of Google’s youngest ever CMOs—but now says Gen Z are better off ice skating than learning to code

Learning to code was once the fast-track ticket to success. It’s the self-taught skill that launched the careers of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. Even former President Barack Obama urged young people to learn to code. But according to one former Google CMO who started coding at 12, AI has just killed it.

Alon Chen built a $2 billion product line at Google by 28, walked away from a seven-figure equity package, and went on to found Tastewise—an AI food intelligence company now trusted by PepsiCo, Nestlé, and Mars. He knows better than most what it takes to make it in tech. And he’s no longer recommending coding as the way in.

“Coding is becoming obsolete. It’s not needed today,” Chen told Fortune. “What’s needed today, more than ever, is creativity and resourcefulness and execution. There is no need to write code anymore.”

His explanation for why is simple: it’s not that technical skills don’t matter. It’s that the tools have democratized them. “You can operate an extremely successful business without having any ability to write even one line of code,” he said.

He’s got a point: Zuckerberg said that AI will be writing all code by this year. At Microsoft, AI is already writing 30% of the tech giant’s code.

And it’s not just coding, Chen went as far as to say all “technology [skills] is almost becoming obsolete.” He suggested Gen Alpha would even be better off leveraging their ice skating skills........

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